Sunday 18 January 2015

Window Dressing

A lot of people seem to be of the opinion that NKVD commissars were wandering up and down aisles of factories, shooting people that didn't report enough successes on the spot, and this is why everyone was hurriedly drilling holes in captured German tanks and writing down extra zeros to make their own stuff look good. For those people, this is the kind of misconduct that would obtain a reaction from internal affairs:

"The Special Department of the NKVD of the Stalingrad Military District reports that the Senior Military Representative of the Stalingrad Tractor Factory, Military Engineer 2nd Grade Levin and the factory management are giving overly large figures for production of T-34 tanks.

In January, the factory should have produced 308 tanks. Levin reported that 224 tanks passed inspection. In practice, only 182 tanks were fully assembled, and 62 were still in the process of being assembled, and were on the assembly lines without turrets, armament, sights, etc.

The chief engineer of the factory, Demyanovich, gave Levin a guarantee that the tanks will be ready by February 5th, but only 32 of the vehicles were ready by that time, and the rest were still undergoing assembly until February 17th.

On February 7th, Levin was summoned to the NKVD, where he confirmed that he gave incorrect data regarding production to the NKO and NKTP, and that he approved vehicles that have not been produced yet. His explanation for this was that he did not wish for the February production run to be affected by leftover tanks from January. He claimed that the chief of GABTU, comrade Fedorenko, permitted him to do this, but our requests did not confirm this.

This window dressing from factory management was repeated on February 15th, 1942. The factory reported that they produced 132 tanks in the first half of February, out of which 130 were approved. In reality, only 128 vehicles left the factory, and 110 were approved.

We consider it necessary to hold Levin and other specific guilty parties from the factory management responsible.

Chief of the 3rd Department of the Special Department of the NKVD, Major of State Security, Rogov."

CAMD RF 38-11355-918

2 comments:

  1. Who was Military Engineer 2nd Grade in March?

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  2. his rank is not the point - he was "Senior Military Representative"

    and he was working with STZ still at least at the beginning of august


    and by the by - it's "Senior Military Representative -at- the Stalingrad Tractor Factory"



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